Page 63 - Studio International - May 1969

New York

commentary

POLLOCK AT MARLBOROUGH-GERSON;
DE KOONING AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN
ART AND KNOEDLER

At the time of Jackson Pollock's death in
1956, it could be said that he and de Kooning
were the most avidly discussed artists that had
ever appeared on the American horizon. I
remember sadly registering the significance
of Pollock's existence in American life when,
on the Santa Fe train en route to New York, a
special bulletin announcing Pollock's death
was handed out to the passengers. No artist
had ever before succeeded in penetrating the
consciousness of mass America to this extent.
Pollock and de Kooning had shared certain
experiences of a cultural nature by that time.
They had both experienced the kind of in-
stant success which characterizes the arts here,
and they had both known the bitter back-
lash that so quickly follows. When Pollock's
black-and-white paintings, so splendidly pre-
sented recently at the MARLBOROUGH-GERSON
GALLERY, were first exhibited in 1951, there
were no lack of mourners regretting this lapse
in his powers. For the rest of his short life-
time, Pollock was bedevilled with the insistent
voices that held up a brief adventure—the
abstract drip paintings—as his 'great' achieve-
ment and refused to follow him elsewhere. Willem de Kooning Attic study 1949
oil and enamel on buff paper, mounted on
While Pollock was dealing with apparitions composition board, 18⅞ x 23⅞ in.
and introducing figurative elements in the Coll: D. and J. de Menu
black and white paintings, de Kooning was 2
Jackson Pollock Untitled c. 1943
embarking on his absorbing exploration of ink on paper, 13 x 10 in.
the woman motif in a new and vastly more
expressionist mode than had characterized Willem de Kooning Untitled 1968
oil on paper, mounted on paper, 41 X 30 in.
his figurative works of the 1940s. When he
exhibited his women in 1953, the same chorus
of mourners appeared, muttering darkly that
he had slipped backward in time, and had
lost his painterly judgement. For both de
Kooning and Pollock, these bleak commenta-
tors reserved their choicest phrases of obloquy,